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Loading... The Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel (edition 2010)by Sarah Addison Allen (Author)
Work InformationThe Girl Who Chased the Moon: A Novel by Sarah Addison Allen
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen Contemporary magical realism. Multiple timelines. Emily moves in with Grandpa Vance. When she first gets there, the house is old and gray with shingles and paint chips raining down in the yard. She loses her charm bracelet that was her mother’s but it shows up back on the table outside. She’s not sure how it got there. Emily knows nothing about her mother at her own age and she doesn’t understand why she’s asked to leave a party, so spends time asking questions of Wynn Coffee, her grandfather and people from the small town. There is a secret the town keeps that she thinks may be why her mother left and never returned. Julie bakes pastries and pies for the BBQ restaurant she inherited to make enough money to sell. She’s staying two years only. Julie offers to be a friend to Emily. Julie and Sawyer reconnect but Julie has a secret as well. The story continues with Julie in the current timeline, as well as some of the past, while Emily learns about her mother’s past. Overlapping and interwoven timelines and life of the three women. 🎧While I enjoyed listening to this via audiobook, I think I would have had an easier time separating the timelines by reading it. I did slow down the performance and backtracked a few times to keep it all clear. I enjoyed the slight mystery of “the magic” and while I absolutely loved the ending, I wanted the next scene and reaction too. A girl of 17 moves to a small North Carolina town to live with her grandfather. She discovers that her mother had a very different reputation in that town, and she must live it down. Another woman, who had tough teenage years in that town has come home to clear up her father's affairs after his death. This is the story of both women learning to look at the past through a different lens than they had seen it before, and making peace with it. This author plays fast and loose with anthropomorphism and comparison, "sunlight coughing through the windows." Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Her books have a tiny bit of soft magic in them, or at least fantastical happenings. The stories are pleasant and easy on the brain. Warning: Please have a delicious cake on hand if you begin reading this story. You will need several pieces of it before you are done. (3.5/5) I will start by admitting that I am quite partial to books that feature magical realism, especially if said magical realism is tied to food. I found the writing to be quite easy to read and in the beginning, the characters varied, interesting and distinct, even the town it was set in had character.The plot moved at a great pace and I found myself wanting to continue reading rather than putting it down between chapters. Whilst I loved the storyline and the characters I began to feel as though the book became rushed and the characters, previously three dimensional with interesting stories, became mere chess pieces moved around on a board in order to finish the game. Each of their stories were 'resolved' and put to rest without actually feeling like they were. To me, the characters and their relationships at the end of the book felt like mere shadows of the promise they showed in the beginning. It was was if the ending told us, 'everything worked out in the end,' and left it at that. Some I felt we were cheated out of knowing - there were so many individuals with their own stories to tell but all we got was a two-second glimpse with many unanswered questions. Given a little more time and attention, this could have been a magnificent book with unforgettable characters.
Publishers Weekly Reviews Allen's latest (after The Sugar Queen) takes the familiar setup of a young protagonist returning to the small town where her elusive mother was raised, and subverts it by sprinkling just enough magic into the narrative to keep things lively but short of saccharine. Seventeen-year-old Emily Benedict, intent on learning more about her mother, Dulcie, moves in with her grandfather, but is disappointed to find that her grandfather doesn't want to talk much about Dulcie. She soon discovers, though, that many still hold a grudge against Dulcie for the way she treated an old sweetheart before dumping him and disappearing. Luckily, Dulcie's high school adversary, Julia Winterson, back in town to pay down her deceased father's debt, takes a shine to Emily. She's working another quest as well: baking cakes every day with the hope that they'll somehow attract the daughter she gave up for adoption years ago. There are love interests, big family secrets, and magical happenings (color-changing wallpaper, mysterious lights) aplenty as Allen charts the spiraling inter-generational stories, bringing everything together in an unexpected way. Is contained inIs abridged inAwardsDistinctions
Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother's life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew--a reclusive, real-life gentle giant--she realizes that mysteries aren't solved in Mullaby, they're a way of life. No library descriptions found.
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LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumSarah Addison Allen's book The Girl Who Chased the Moon was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Yes, I truly loved this story. I loved that Emily was genuinely sweet. She wasn't over the top goody goody---but she was truly kind and thoughtful. This was punctuated even further by the fact that I'd just finished Alice Hoffman's, The Probable Future which features a super snotty teen as its MC.
I love these kinds of stories that are magical without being magicky. I can't wait to read more! ( )